With millions fighting a daily battle against discrimination to gain access to education, health services and decent work, the President of the General Assembly ALI ABDUSSALAM TREKI     (Libya) urged the United Nations family to join hands with Governments and other stakeholders around the world in embracing diversity and ending discrimination, during a special meeting to mark the end of the International Year of Human Rights Learning.

“Human rights stand, alongside development and peace and security, as a pillar of the Organization,” he said, reaffirming that promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction to race, sex, language or religion, was a fundamental purpose of the United Nations.

The special meeting -- held on Human Rights Day, as well as the sixty-first anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- followed the Assembly’s adoption of a resolution on follow-up to the International Year of Human Rights Learning (A/C.3/64/L.33/Rev.1).

By that text, which was recommended by its Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural), the Assembly encouraged States to expand on efforts made during the International Year and to consider devoting the resources necessary to design and implement long-term human rights learning programmes of action at all levels. It also recommended that the Human Rights Council integrate human rights learning into the draft United Nations declaration on human rights education and training, which had been prepared and would be considered by the Council during a high-level discussion on the matter in March.

Welcoming the text’s adoption, the representative of Benin, which was the main sponsor of the resolution that established the International Year, said that in a world where the majority of humanity had no access to dignity, freedom or responsibility, the objective was to build momentum among everyday citizens to discover their human rights and identify how those rights worked to make their daily lives better.  “We have often failed to focus on what is really at stake: we must give people the means to become aware of the decision-making processes that are affecting their lives,” he declared.

Emphasizing the link between education and progress toward the realization of human rights, the representative of the United States said knowledge of human rights was their first defence.  Human rights learning, thus, formed the heart of promoting human rights.  Among other things, this learning should include training programmes, developing human rights curricula, and incorporating human rights education and learning into extracurricular activities.

Several speakers highlighted their own country’s efforts to extend human rights learning to their citizens, particularly the most vulnerable.  For example, Thailand told delegates his country had translated the Universal Declaration into Braille and created a child-friendly version.   Kazakhstan had set up a digital library of legal documents on human rights.

Switzerland’s delegate stressed that a United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training would both provide a definition of principles and responsibilities related to human rights education and deliver the message that such education was not just “nice to have”, but necessary in preventing rights violations and improving countries’ human rights records.